"Paranormal Witness: The Fox Hollow Farm" EP 208 Recap

A family fears their Indianapolis mansion is haunted by the serial killer who previously resided there.

In 2006, the Graves family yearned for life outside the busy, city life and while looking for homes out the country, they found a beautiful manor complete with a barn outside and an indoor pool, surrounded by beautiful, lush green woods. The family was very impressed the first time they saw the beautiful home. "It was breathtaking! You walk into the home and living room and you want to stay,” Vicky Graves said about her first visit to the home. Her husband, Rob agreed: "It was in a very desirable location and property. But no one is living here. So you ask yourself what is going on?” As Rob looked more around the home and landscape, he realized that it might be a property he remembered hearing about in the local news so he asked the realtor about it. The realtor told him that Indiana’s notorious serial killer Herbert Baumeister lived there. Baumeister was known to be responsible for the death of 9 single, homosexual men, 7 of them whose remains were buried under the estate. Vicky was a laboratory medical scientist so having been exposed to one's mortality, the idea of living in the home didn’t bother her so much; however, she acknowledged she felt a bit different knowing who owned the home and what had happened. The family moved in anyways and figured all would be well at the Graves household. 

One day, Vicky was cleaning around the pool area. Rob and Vicky had two teenage boys that loved to use the pool and because they got rambuctious like boys are, gravel was tracked in the pool house so Vicky would have to use the vacuum cleaner to clean it up. One day when she was using it, the vacuum randomly turned off. Thinking she yanked on the extension cord, she goes back to plug it back in and continued vacuuming. The vacuum turns off again. Vicky stands up and looks, and this time, the cord is pulled apart and 12 inches apart. This is really odd because I know that I didn't pull it apart, Vicky thought. Vicky proceeds to plug it back in again. The plug then sparked out and yanked off again. "The hairs in the back of my hair stood up. There was an unsettling presence there,” Vicky recalls; “It felt like someone was there and someone didn't want me there.” 

From who else's point-of-view?

Meanwhile, Rob worked at a car dealership when a man named Joe was hired on to work with him. Rob and Joe immediately became good friends and enjoyed working together. However, Joe was having trouble making it to work on time because he lived an hour away and traffic was brutal. Rob then suggested an apartment at the house Joe could use. Rob also warned him about the history of the house and who used to live there but Joe figured since all the “bad things” in the house were gone, it would be okay to live in. After spending a day moving in the apartment, unloading boxes and boxes from the moving truck, Joe was exhausted. Joe brought his dog Fred with him and passed out on the bed from exhaustion. Finally, everything was settled and Joe felt a sense of relief! However, Joe had a less-than-pleasant sleep. He recalls a dream he had where he had a sensation to run. "I felt like something was chasing me...I was running from something bad,” Joe explains. “I was running for my life".  Joe immediately got up to run and smashed into the doorframe and fell on his face. He laid there in pain as shards of glass dug into his fingers. Joe didn't know what he was running from but he felt a sensation to run out right away. He didn’t really know where the sensation was coming from…

An odd sensation to run....

One afternoon, Rob was on a ladder painting the house and Vicky came home from work. Vicky was looking at his work when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. “I saw someone standing there,” she said. “I realized that he's got a red t-shirt on and I figure it’s a trespasser. He had his back to me and he slowly walked away. I then realized I couldn't see his legs! And suddenly, he disappeared into the trees…” she recalls. Rob immediately thinks it’s what he describes as a “serial killer groupie”. Both went to the sight where the man was standing but they saw nothing. Because of her job, Vicky claimed she was one of the biggest skeptics. "You have to prove things to me! But I gauruntee you that I saw what I saw!” she exclaimed. One night at around 9pm, Joe was was washing dishes and heard a knock on the door. He grabbed a towel, dried his hands, saying he’d be right there but the door kept knocking. He opens the door wide and no one is in there. He looks over the balcony and staircase and still saw no one. However, Joe felt like he was being watched. But he still didn't see anything. In another scenario, Joe is watching TV when he turns it off to go to bed. He catches something on the screen and turns around. He catches what he describes as a "wisp of something”.  Joe looks back in the bedroom and again, doesn't see anything . Meanwhile, Rob became concerned with what both Vicky and Joe saw and experiences so he installed surveillance cameras that were placed from the barn that had views of the front of the house, in the back of the house, at the front door, and at the back door. The cameras were on continuously. 

Cameras rolling...

Three weeks after Joe moved in, Joe would take walks with his dog Fred and walk up and down the driveway on clear nights. He hears a noise coming from the woods. Fred stops and his ears perk up. He's making low growling noises as well. Fred takes off running and Joe ran after him to see what he was looking at. He saw a man in a red shirt. Once again, the man disappeared into the trees. Joe was fearful to go into the woods because of the man, thinking he may have ill-intent to hurt Joe. But Joe slowly goes into the woods to call out for Fred. As Joe follows Fred's barks, he sees the man in the red shirt for the second time. While Joe doesn’t go into exact detail of what the man was, it was enough to scare both Joe and Fred and both shoot out of there like a bat out of hell. The next day, Joe tells Vicky about it and shows Vicky where he saw the man and where he disappeared to. "There was no evidence that anyone had been there and I'm thinking, okay.....what's going on?" Vicky said. But this wasn’t the last time Joe would experience something in his apartment. 

Joe LeBlanc recalling his dark days spent at the home and what would haunt him....

"One night, I woke up with this startling feel and I hear knocking on the door,” Joe said. Joe was calling out and wasn't hearing a response. The knocking repeated and repeated and Joe actually felt the wood in the panel vibrating inside the door. Joe opens the door and no one is there. The door knob was still horizontal and knocked one last time. "That scared the hell out of me!" Joe remembers. Again, there was no evidence of footsteps being seen or heard. Joe goes out to explore the premises but sees nothing so goes back in his apartment. He's walking upstairs and couldn't see something beyond the lights but still felt like he was being watched. Joe shuts the door, locks the deadbolt and then Fred starts growling at Joe. Joe looks around and hears what he said sounds like the door knob turning. He heard the spring compressing too. Then it stopped turning….BANG! The door flew open and slammed in the wall, sending woodchips flying all over the apartment. "I saw this man. He had a complete look of terror on his face. You can tell he was running for his life, his breathing heavy and he was trying to run from something. I've never seen anything like that in my life!" Joe explains. After much thinking and reflecting, Joe starts thinking that the man he saw was a victim of the serial killer. Joe also wonders why the victim is reaching out to him. "I think I see the victims because they reach out to us to find closure, to seek assistance" Joe explained. Joe and Vicky started researching more on the Herbert Baumeister investigation and the victims of his crimes. They called the local news station to get original footage from the coverage of the case in 1996. In the video coverage, they started showing photos of the victim. One particular one popped up. Joe begins freaking out because he recognizes him… it was the man he had seen in his apartment. But as they watched more of the footage, they learned the police found around 5,500 bone fragments from the property and more were to be found. This inspires Joe to explore the woods and take Fred with him. As they are exploring the woods, Joe looks to the left and something caught his eye. A certain item was lying on the ground as if being meant to find it. "At one point, it all started to make sense,” Joe said about the mystery item he found. It was a Sunday night when Rob and Vicky came home from dinner when Joe runs up to the driveway and said "I found something, you need to see!" The three of them go to the kitchen. 

Joe then shows them a bone, which Vicky identifies as a human femur bone.

What surprised Vicky more so than the actual discovery of the bone was at how flawless the condition of the bone seen…she was even more amazed when she learned of where Joe found it, right on top in the woods, not buried within dirt covered and decayed. Joe then contacted the lead detective on the case and he agreed to come out and show them where everything happened. According to the detective, victims were selected by gay bars in downtown and how he would bring home his victims in for a swim in the pool. Mannequins were found around the pool in various poses, like a setup to lure his victims. What the detective concluded is that the killer would drug his victims with alcohol and/or drugs, lure them into the pool for sadistic, sexual acts and then kill them by strangling them. Herbert eventually killed himself by a gunshot wound to the head on July 3, 1996 to avoid arrest. He traveled to Canada to commit his own suicide.

One night at around 6 o’clock, Joe, his friend Jeremy and the Graver boys were taking a swim in the pool, horsing around one another. One of their pool activities was diving to the bottom of the pool picking up large beetles found there. All the sudden, Joe felt a sensation in his neck, like hands were on his neck. He thought it was one of the guys but they were on the other side of the pool from where Joe was. All the sudden, Joe feels these fingers and describes it as if he was being strangled. When all of this is happening, Jeremy turns to look at him and sees Joe with his hands to his neck and pure panic in his face. Jeremy knew then that Joe was not joking. The hauntings continued. In another scenario, Joe was at the front door where his computer was when all the sudden, he heard “metallic scraping”. Joe then notices something strange in the wall. He sees knife marks on the wall and they went across the wall. At this point, Joe is thinking someone could've been murdered or stabbed. Inspired by ghost shows on TV that he saw, Joe uses a voice audio recorder on his phone and turns off everything in his house, from lights to fans, anything that would cause noise and begins conducting an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) session in the kitchen. EVP’s are audio/voice recorders being used to ask questions to ghosts/entities and is a way a person can possibly communicate and hear the “voices” of spirits. Joe then asks “Is there anyone in here?” He doesn’t hear a response. All the sudden Fred growls in the background. After looking back and listening to his recorder, he all the sudden hears an answer to his question “Are you here?” Joe hears a crystal clear male’s voice respond;

“The married one”

Shocked at his paranormal discovery, Joe looks through his files of information on the victims. All the victims were single. Herbert Baumeister was the only one in the case that was married. Joe then believes then that it’s not just the spirits of the victims that may be still lingering in the house…..

The femur bone was tested by a laboratory and remains unidentified.

Janes Notes: After last week's headache of an episode, I was pondering whether to get out the vodka for this one or not. However, I didn't need the liquor for this one because it had me hooked from start...and it wasn't towards the end I literally felt chills. But before we get to the end part, let's get into the case. Fortunately, I was able to pull up this article from People that dates back to 1996, which can be found here. I tried to then look up the lead detective in this case but sadly, he passed away at the age of 61 in the beginning of the year. Further information about Herbert Baumeister and the timeline of his life leading up to his suicide can be found here in a PDF format that goes into great detail about his childhood, his rather bizarre behavior during adolescence leading up to his murder cases and murder profile. What intrigued me more so about this case was the part about Joe and Jeremy playfully picking up dead beetles from the pool. Part of me just suggests that this is boys just being boys.It's a common theory that serial killers will "make their start" not by going immediately after humans but experimenting and killing animals. Is there a correlation between the dead beetles, the boys playing with them and Joe's strangling sensation. I personally don't think so but it has been something that I found interesting. As far as the EVP goes? I think out of all the EVP's I've heard in my years of studying this kind of thing...that one is one of the most chilling because of how clear it is. A lot of EVP's I've heard have been whispers, mumbles...not very clear. This one? So clear and so chilling.....

I could easily plaster pictures of this man all over this blog post but this is the paranormal and death were talking and I would instead rather take the time to use this as a place to honor the victims whose lives were taken too soon. So let me close this recap with this;

On behalf of all who contribute here to “MOB Wives”, we all send our deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims. We cannot imagine the grief you’ve had to endure and we all pray that you all find comfort and bask in the wonderful memories you've have with your loved ones. To those whose remains have yet to be found, whose remains still have yet to be properly identified, may your souls find peace and may your families find peace as well.

Picture Credit: Syfy

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Check out my own site for more ghost adventures at Ghost In A Machine